It All Started With A Joint
by Lucillia
Summary: Who knew that bringing marijuana onto the station would create such chaos? Who knew that there were Hippie Shadows? Who knew what would happen when a Labor Law attorney was put in a Shadow vessel? Certainly not the Shadows. Certainly not Sheridan.
1. The Joint

The security officer ducked into a small alcove in a relatively abandoned section of Down Below. If anyone found out he'd brought Marajuana onto the station...

He carefully looked left and right before pulling the rolled joint out of his pocket. He surreptitiously checked his surroundings once more before he lit it and inhaled.

A passing group of Shadows noticed the hiding officer. They would've continued on their way if one of them hadn't stopped.

"I remember that game." the one who stopped said.

FLASHBACK

Earth, the 60s:

The joint was going around the room.

"Hey, how about we give it to that freaky spider thing in the corner." The man who insisted he be called Skye said.

"Um, should you even be smoking this while you're on LSD?" Said the woman next to him.

END FLASHBACK

The security officer nearly jumped out of his skin when an invisible person poked him in the arm and said "Hand it over man." The joint fell out of his hand and suddenly rose into the air. The security officer decided to run for it when the joint started doing a slow circle around the corridor.

"So, what now?" One of the Shadows asked once the joint was gone.

The Shadown who had started the "game" scratched the top of his head with one of his pointy legs. "Um, let me think a minute...Oh, yeah, now I remember, we're supposed to carry signs with funny looking circles and start protesting the war."

"Sounds like fun, let's go." One of the Shadows at the back of the group said.

--

Captain Sheridan started idly shuffling the paperwork on his desk for the umpteenth time as he waited for the explosion. It was quiet around here, too quiet.

Suddenly his commlink chirped.

"Sheridan here." He said hoping that the headache resulting from whatever was happening wouldn't be too bad.

"Um, We've got a war protest going on in the Zocalo that I think you should come and see." Garibaldi said on the other end.

"Fine, I'm on my way." Sheridan said before closing the connection. A war protest wouldn't be all that bad, now would it?

--

Down in the Zocalo several incredulous security personell, dozens of confused Mimbari, a stunned Captain, and a crowd of aliens whose emotions ranged from shock to mild amusement at the free show, watched as a group of Shadows carried signs with slogans straight out of Earth's history and paced back and forth protesting the war.


	2. The Strike

Aaron Smith had been heading home after settling a minor labor dispute in an outlying mining colony when the ship he was on was attacked by Shadows. Because they were short on pilots for their living vessels, Smith was taken to be joined with one instead of being killed outright.

"Hello?" Smith called out when he regained consciousness. He sensed someone near.

_Hello?_ the thing near and around Smith answered.

"What are you?" Smith asked, totally freaked out by his situation.

_I am ship._ the thing Smith was in, which turned out to be a Shadow vessel replied.

A long discussion ensued. After hours of listening to the ship tell him what it was like to be a Shadow vessel and what its and his responsibilities were Smith asked the all important question.

"Who is your Union rep?"

_Union rep?_ the ship that Smith had named Bob asked.

This led to yet another discussion about working conditions and Earth's labor laws.

--

Captain Sheridan shuffled the papers on his desk waiting for the day's explosion or its equivalent. Other than the continuing war protests in the Zocalo which had been relegated to nonissue status after the second day, it had been an extremely quiet week. It was time for the other shoe to drop. Captain Sheridan just hoped it didn't land on him.

"Uh, Captain I think you should have a look at this." Susan Ivanova called from C&C.

This was it. The shoe had dropped. Sheridan ran from his office as fast as he could. The first of the flung paperwork hadn't even reached the floor by the time he reached the door.

--

Captain John Sherridan stared at the view outside the station. Hundreds of Shadow vessels were lined up outside. Instead of attacking the station, they were flying back and forth along a line making strange squeaking and shrieking noises.

"Um, I just got a transmission from the lead vessel." Susan Ivanova said with a highly confused and incredulous look on her face "Apparently, they're on strike."


	3. The Game

A shadow whose name humans could never pronounce and didn't have an equivilant in the human languages watched the goings on on and near Babylon 5 with a great deal of interest. The game was a lot more fun with the humans around. Humans really did know how to play. If it weren't for the Vorlons...

--

"And we've told the Vorlons where to shove their game of Galactic Chess. Can we play with you guys now?" The Shadow finished. It had been three days since he had decided to start a game with the humans instead of those stuffy Vorlons, now he was in front of the Commanding officer of Babylon 5.

"Sure, what exactly did you have in mind?" John Sheridan, Captain of Babylon 5 said as his fingers curled a little more tightly around the spork he had been using to eat his fruit salad.

The negotiations for the Human vs. Shadows game began.

--

Several hours later Captain Sheridan "found" Ambassador Kosh dead in his quarters.

"It was Colonel Mustard in the Library with the candlestick." announced a Shadow dressed as Sherlock Holmes who had been inspecting the ambassador's body.

"Um," Garibaldi began.

"You heard him, it was Colnel Mustard in the Library with the Candlestick, just as he said." Captain Sheridan yelled as he tried to hide the spork further behind his back.

Seeing the look in the Captain's eyes, Garibaldi wisely decided not to point out that not only did the station not have a library, there was nobody named Colonel Mustard within several lightyears of the station.

--

The announcement that the Shadows vs. Humans Interstellar Prank War and Tagfest would be on in two days was met by a great deal of cheering by the Shadow populace who had gotten bored with the constant games of Shadows vs Vorlons Galactic Chaos vs. Order Chess.


	4. The Moon

The security officer didn't quite know how to respond to the sight of Shadows openly boarding the station. One second they had been at war with these mysterious "Shadows" that cropped up every thousand years or so to sow chaos and destruction and the next everyone learns the damn things thought the wars were all part of some dreadfully dull game they'd been playing with the power hungry Vorlons who had actually been trying to make some sort of point. Sherridan had managed to end the "game" in a rather creative manner bringing a stop to most of the death and destruction (the exception being the wrath that was brought down on the heads of the Vorlons who were hard pressed to keep all of the various pissed off races including the Telepaths who learned that their development had been messed with by them from killing them outright).

As the Shadows were rather childlike when they weren't playing the "Villians" the Vorlons were seen as the bad guys for taking advantage of the poor creatures in this situation. Unlike the straightlaced Vorlons, the Shadows' history read like some non-stop party. The creatures who had become synonymous with evil over the centuries, were actually a rather laid back race that preferred fun and games. Apparently the last "Real" war any of the Shadows had fought had been when an outside race had dropped by attempting to conquer them and got driven back to their ships under a barrage of waste filled balloons. It had been quite fortunate for the game playing, party loving race that the invaders had a strong religious taboo against being touched by excrement.

As the third Shadow passed by him, he couldn't help but start at its appearance. It had piercings in random places, it had chains, it had multicolored spikes running down its head, it was wearing what looked to be human clothing a couple centuries out of date that was tailored to its rather unique form, and it was carrying something he hadn't seen outside a museum. If he wasn't mistaken, it was some sort of radio.

"ID please." he said.

"Screw you!" it said.

"Hey, if you're thinking of making trouble..." he started, wondering what you threatened a multicolored spider thing with. For all he knew it would enjoy the brig.

"Was that not the proper greeting? Oh dear..." it said in a rather cultured tone.

* * *

President Clark sat in his office seething. He was going to kill Sheridan. The man had lost him his allies. Had he not made whatever treaty he had to end the "game" between the Shadows and the Vorlons, he would still have those stupid creatures at his beck and call. He had planned on using them to upgrade the next generation of ships.

The instant the "game" was over the Shadows ditched him for being a "Pompous, Self Important...nevermind, we'll just send you a list.".

Deciding that the stress wasn't good for his health, he decided to head out to the balcony to look at the moon. That had always calmed him as a child, and continued to do so now. Tonight was a full moon which was always special.

Looking up into the sky, he found something new to yell about rather than the peace he had sought, for upon the moon's once serene surface something had been written.

"What the effing hell does Kilroy Was Here mean?!"


	5. The New Player

"So, how many points do we get for defacing the stellar body that orbits your homeworld?" the leader of the Shadows who was sporting a rainbow colored wig and several pairs of over-sized shoes asked.

"Not as many as if you'd tagged the Mimbari homeworld like we did." Sheridan replied with a smirk. "By the way, why are you dressed up like a clown?"

"I'm entertaining at children's parties to pick up a few extra credits." the Shadow replied. "After we ditched our pawns after the last game ended, we were informed that we were on our own for supplies, and we've been forced to be creative in order to gather the resources we need."

"I'm sorry to hear that." Sheridan replied, wincing at the latest reminder of how the Vorlons had screwed everyone over.

"Don't be, it's been fun!" the Shadow replied. "You humans really know how to play."

**Meanwhile, on Mars:**

Though he longed to be amongst those who'd caused the Vorlons to hole up on their homeworld out of fear, Bester had remained behind. Someone had to maintain law and order in the Corps.

As he sat at his desk reading the latest report on the mostly empty re-education camps in which only the sickest and weakest remained because everyone else - including most of the guards - had gone to give the Vorlons a piece of their minds in the hopes that they choked on it, he received a call from Babylon 5.

Though he was tempted to tell them where they could shove their suggestion, he didn't. It sounded too fun to pass up...

**Meanwhile, back on Babylon 5:**

Delenn wished that Jeffrey Sinclair hadn't left to become Valen before the Shadows had revealed their true nature, because then he could have warned them of this.

Their entire capitol city had been covered in orange paint by the humans, and she wasn't entirely certain that it was merely a prank. There was an element of warning to it, a statement of "If we could do this for fun, we can do far worse anytime we want."

The Earth-Mimbari war had not been forgotten by either side, and this could only serve to further fuel the tension between their two races.

If war between Earth and Mimbari broke out once more, it could spark the galactic war that the Vorlons had been trying to create, but not in the controlled manner the Vorlons had wanted.

Perhaps, she could convince the warrior caste that it would be in their best interests to attempt to outprank the humans. The humans had a quaint little saying about laughter, and medicine, and laughter was something her people desperately needed now, so soon after _This_.


	6. The Hidden Ace

The Mimbari blinked at the strange sound that his chair had made as he'd sat down. For some strange reason both the humans and the Narns had found the noise amusing. Standing up, he found that he'd seated himself on a pinkish baloonlike thing that had been flattened by his sitting on it.

"Exactly how was this supposed to be funny?" he asked as he examined the object.

"Humans find the sounds certain bodily functions make to be absolutely hilarious." a somewhat drunken Centauri replied. "I never did get Earth humor."

Sighing, the Mimbari dropped the object that he'd been examining back onto the chair and turned to leave, dropping a couple tablets that were meant to turn one's skin blue into a human's drink on the way out.

**Meanwhile, on Mars:**

Bester carefully counted the crates of supplies that were being loaded onto the cargo ship that he'd borrowed from the Corp. Normally, someone would have had something to say about his borrowing something so large for purposes that weren't strictly Corps business but, there was only a skeleton crew hanging back to tend to the kids and a few other things while everyone else tried to be amongst the first to get in when the defenses surrounding the Vorlon homeworld finally cracked.

Someone had found Director Vacit's personal notes and had discovered that the man had tried other options before the Vorlons had told him to round up all the rogues in order to step up the experiments that hadn't been nearly as inhumane as they'd gotten in later years.

It had been because of the Vorlons that his parents had...No. No. No. Bad thoughts. Bad thoughts. His parents had died in the Teeptown bombing of 2189 and thinking along those other lines lay madness.

Besides, he had a job to do.

Eventually, the last of the crates would be loaded, and next stop Z'ha'dum.


End file.
